Critics who cook: out to impress the chefs

A bunch of restaurant critics will try to impress the likes of Fergus Henderson with their cooking this Sunday. Jay Rayner psyches out the opposition with his winning recipe; which meals do you wheel out to impress?

Critics who cook: out to impress the chefs

A bunch of restaurant critics will try to impress the likes of Fergus Henderson with their cooking this Sunday. Jay Rayner psyches out the opposition with his winning recipe; which meals do you wheel out to impress?

Friday 17 October 2008 07.06 EDT
First published on Friday 17 October 2008 07.06 EDT

The Observer's famed theatre reviewer, Kenneth Tynan, once said that a critic is someone who "knows the way but can't drive the car". Well, this Sunday evening, a bunch of food critics and writers will be getting behind the steering wheel. Ten of us, including Matthew Fort of the Guardian, Tom Parker Bowles of the Mail on Sunday and Charles Campion of the Evening Standard, will be cooking for a bunch of chefs, to raise money for Action Against Hunger, a very worthy cause. A few tickets are still available for the event, entitled, naturally enough, Too Many Critics and are priced at £130 (to get hold of them, email: h.drummond@aahuk.org or give them a ring on 020 8293 6133).

So what will we be cooking? Stuffing, that's what. Sounds simple, doesn't it and, to be honest, a passable stuffing isn't that strenuous a task. But passable will not do, given that our efforts will be judged by Raymond Blanc, Fergus Henderson and Shane Osborn. Our stuffings will accompany a tasting plate of Middlewhite, Tamworth and Gloucester Old Spot pork belly, loin and leg. My kind of food.

I'm convinced my recipe, which has been pressed into service many times and in many ways in the Rayner household, is a complete winner, involving as it does quality sausage meat, marsala wine, Parma ham and unsweetened chestnut puree (the very devil to get hold of, but I've found some.) It's rich and highly flavoured and exceptionally moreish. I defy anyone not to like it.

Limbering up for this contest – we will be in the kitchens of the Royal Exchange in the City of London from around lunchtime on Sunday – I fell to thinking about the sort of things I cook when I want to impress someone. First, in answer to a question that's often asked, yes, I do cook. I am terrible at all things pastry. When there's baking to be done, it's my wife's job. Baking is essentially chemistry plus inspiration and I am terrible when that sort of accuracy is demanded.But I'm big on roasting and braising and saucing and searing. I've even done a small amount of time in restaurant kitchens, particularly when I was researching my last novel, the Oyster House Siege. I have to admit that Sunday's menu is not far off what I would do at home were I trying to make a point. I do not, I think, have to go into detail about my love of all things pig. I've bored for Britain on that one. Certainly, if I'm really going for it, it will be one of two things. One of them is a porchetta, the boned and rolled loin, stuffed and seasoned with fennel seeds, rosemary, garlic and salt. Roast for a good three or four hours, it (almost) can't be beat.

The one thing that can beat it is confit pork belly, which is an outrageous piece of meat cookery. Take a foot square slab of pork belly, and submerge in an oven pan of goose fat, flavoured with whole garlic cloves and a few fresh herbs. Let it bubble away in a very low oven for a good four to six hours. Remove the belly from the goose fat (which, strained, can be used again) and, once cool, wrap tightly in cling film, put a couple of weights on top and leave it in the fridge over night. The skin will appear to have turned in to a hardish jelly.

When you are ready to cook, heat the oven as high as it will go. Cut the belly into reasonable sized individual portions (read big). Place skin side down on an oven pan which has been greased with a little goose fat, and place a square of grease proof paper over the upward facing meat. Roast for about 20 to 25 minutes. Take it out, turn over the pieces of pork belly and – crucial this – hold the pan somewhere chilly for a minute or so. On a cool winter's evening just holding it outside the back door will do. The crackling will go like glass.

The whole thing probably sounds incredibly fatty but it's not. The confiting process dissolves most of the fat in the pork belly itself and the second roast melts away the rest of the goose. What's left is a highly flavoured, luscious piece of pork belly. And the love and admiration of your guests. And if I was fully in charge on Sunday night that's what I'd do, but I'm not. Instead they'll have to make do with my fabulous stuffing (he says, trying to psyche out the opposition).

So the question for this Friday is, what do you cook when you really want to impress? Show and tell, please. Show and tell.